Musings: No Limits

Out at dawn, two sweatshirts warding off the chill, moon round as a basketball about to drop behind the clear summit of Makaleha, sun rising red over a beach washed clean of all but ruddy turnstone tracks, I turn to call Koko and see a double rainbow, reminder that joy and beauty have no limits.

Dr. Lee Evslin had a good letter to the editor yesterday about the need to limit radio frequency exposure — especially with kids — before getting into the comparative RF dangers of cell phones and smart meters, and the latter's risk relative to our reliance on fossil fuels.

It did a great job of underscoring two facts that humans like to ignore: we live in a world of risks of our own making; and our willingness to expose ourselves to those risks is determined by how much value we perceive we're getting from the risky activity.

Which is why we have people with cell phones fighting smart meters on this island, even though, as Dr. Evslin notes, “it would take you a year and a half of standing near a smart meter for 24 hours a day in order to be exposed to the same level of RF as you are on a 10-minute cellphone conversation.”

Which is why we have Moms Against Monsanto, but no Moms Against Tablets — even though the same American Academy of Pediatrics that warned against pesticide exposure in kids also says no screen time at all for babies under 2 years old, and just one or two hours per day of entertainment screen time for older kids.

Which is why we have a letter to the editor from Kapaa resident Anna Nimitee (say that name aloud and tell me if you think it's fake) complaining about the “scorched earth” policy of biotech companies operating nowhere near her, while folks working in those same fields have no problem with the pesticides.

Which is why we have people burning fossil fuels in cars and jets to protest against the feared health impacts of GMOs, even though, as Dr. Evslin noted, “Annually, there are over 34,000 deaths and 18 million hospitalizations directly related to pollution from fossil fuels.”

Which is why we have people bitching about how the government — and KIUC, with its smart meters — is invading their privacy, even as they happily post their every thought and move on Facebook, carry a smart phone with GPS tracker and work for the government..

Which is why Americans spend billions fighting terrorists, but fight single-payer health care —  even though they're 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack.

There's no limit, it seems, to the irrational foolishness of human beings.

Which is why I make sure to get my daily dose of nature's joy and beauty.